Month: November 2018

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that his natural political instincts are superior to those of any other current figure.

As campaign 2018 entered its final week, Trump seized upon and elevated the single issue that most energizes his populist base and most convulses our media elite.

Warning of an “invasion,” he pointed to the migrant caravan that had come out of Honduras and was wending its way through Mexico. He then threatened to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship.

As other caravans began to assemble in Central America, Trump said he would send, first 5,200 and then 15,000, troops to the border.

This ignited the predictable hysteria of the media elite who decried his “racism,” his “lying” and his “attack on the 14th Amendment.” Trump, they railed, is sending more troops to the Mexican border than we have in Syria or Iraq.

True. But to most Americans, the fate and future of the republic is more likely to be determined on the U.S.-Mexican border than on the border between Syria and Iraq.

Moreover, in challenging birthright citizenship, Trump has some constitutional history on his side.

The 14th Amendment, approved in 1868, was crafted to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and to guarantee citizenship and equal rights under law to freed slaves and their children.

Did it guarantee that everyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen?

No. In the 1884 Elk v. Wilkins decision, the Supreme Court ruled that John Elk, a Winnebago Indian born on a reservation, had not denied his constitutional right to vote, as he was not a U.S. citizen.

Not for 56 years, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, did Native Americans become U.S. citizens.

Also, the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on those born in the U.S. and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Children of foreign diplomats, though born here, are not citizens.

Most legal scholars do not think Trump can, by executive order, determine who is or is not a citizen under the 14th Amendment.

Yet should Trump issue an executive order and lose in the Supreme Court, the controversy could raise public consciousness and force Congress to enact legislation to clarify what the 14th Amendment precisely means.

Only Canada and the United States, among advanced nations, have birthright citizenship. No European country does. And the Conservative Party in Canada is moving to end it. Does it make sense to grant all the honor, privileges and rights of lifetime U.S. citizenship to anyone who can fly to the U.S. or evade the Border Patrol and have a baby?

Nor is this a small matter. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 6 percent of U.S. births (250,000 per year) are to undocumented immigrants.

Yet that 250,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of immigrants now coming. In 2016, President Obama’s last full year, 1.75 million legal and illegal immigrants arrived, a record.

With two months to go in 2017, the estimated arrivals of legal and illegal immigrants is 1.61 million.

Thus, in two years, 2016 and 2017, the United States will have absorbed more migrants, legal and illegal, than all the people of the 13 states when we became a nation.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are 44.5 million immigrants in the U.S. today, legal and illegal, a number that far exceeds the total U.S. population, North and South, at the time of the Civil War.

While almost all of our immigration before 1965 was from Europe, only 1 in 10 immigrants now comes from the Old Continent.

Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean provide a plurality of migrants, legal and illegal. They have displaced East Asia and South Asia – China, Korea, the Philippines, India – as the primary contributors to the burgeoning U.S. population.

We are assured that the greater the racial, ethnic, religious and cultural diversity we have, the stronger a nation we shall become. Whether true or not, we are going to find out.

For the European population of America, 90 percent of the country in 1965, will have fallen to about 60 percent by 2020, and whites are headed for minority status about 20 years after that.

Of America’s most populous states – California, Texas, Florida and New York – the first two are already minority-majority and the latter two are not far behind.

Yet the gaps between Asian and white Americans, and Hispanic and African-Americans – in income and wealth, crime rates and incarceration rates, test scores and academic achievements – are dramatic and are seemingly enduring.

To the frustration of egalitarians, the meritocracy of free and fair competition in this most diverse of great nations is producing an inequality of rewards and a visible hierarchy of achievement.

Politically, continued mass migration to the USA by peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic, is going to change our country another way. Red state America will inevitably turn blue.

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Recode’s much awaited podcast with Kara Swisher interviewing Elon Musk has finally been published; it was recorded on Halloween evening at Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto and it covered a broad scope of topics: all of Elon Musk’s companies, Saudi Arabia, a normal Musk work week at Tesla, a look back at 2018 and Musk’s distaste for the press – to name a few.

Musk’s tone during the interview was is in contrast with the spaced-out demeanor during the Joe Rogan podcast. He comes off as relatively confident, somewhat reserved and generally in a better mood. Despite this, Musk wasn’t able to make it through the podcast without attacking both journalists and short sellers, despite being “optimistic” about Tesla’s future. 

In the interview, Musk admits that he still tweets “without a filter” simply because he “finds things entertaining”. He said in the interview that he only spends about 10 to 15 minutes a day on Twitter. When asked about whether or not he was under strict orders not to Tweet or whether he would have to change his Twitter behavior as a result of the SEC settlement, Musk replied “not really”.

The “genius” followed up by giving the impression he didn’t understand (or care to understand) his SEC settlement or the pertinent securities laws surrounding what got him in trouble in the first place. 

“I think it’s mostly just if it’s something that might cause a substantial movement in the stock during trading hours. That’s about it,” Musk told Swisher. 

When asked about the press, Musk said that his “regard for the press has dropped quite dramatically.” When asked further about it, he brought up the Wall Street Journal’s most recent article about the FBI investigation into Tesla intensifying and said about the Wall Street Journal “Like, why are they even journalists? They’re terrible. Terrible people.”

He continued on journalists, explaining why he thought there was so much negative press about Tesla. Of course, his explanation did not include anything about missing production targets or burning through cash. Instead, Musk said: “There are good journalists and there are bad ones, and unfortunately the feedback loop for good versus bad is inverted, so the more salacious that an article is, the more salacious the headline is, the more clicks it’s gonna get. Then somebody is not a journalist, they are an ad salesman.”

When Swisher asked Musk if perhaps he was just too sensitive, Musk replied “No. Of course not. I have a strong interest in the truth. Much more than journalists do.”

Asked about 2018, Musk stated more than once that it was “excruciating” and reiterated the obvious: that it is “incredibly difficult” to survive as a car company – a point he reiterated more than five times in just several sentences: 

“It’s been a very difficult year. We had the Model 3 production ramp, which was excruciatingly difficult. It is incredibly difficult to survive as a car company. Incredibly difficult. People have no idea how much pain people at Tesla went through, including myself. It was excruciating. 

Pretty sure I burnt out a bunch of neurons during this process. Running both SpaceX and Tesla is an incredibly difficult … You realize we’re fighting the incredibly competitive car companies. They make very good cars. They’ve been doing this for a long time. They are entrenched. Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lexus, you name it. All those car brands. And the history of car companies in America is terrible. The only ones that haven’t gone bankrupt are Tesla and Ford. That’s it. Everyone else has gone bankrupt.”

He followed up by saying it was “absurd” that Tesla was even alive:

“Making a car company successful is monumentally difficult. There have been many attempts to create a car company and they have all failed, even the ones that have had a strong base of customers, thousands of dealers, thousands of service centers, they’ve already spent the capital for the factories, like GM and Chrysler, still went bankrupt in the last recession. Ford and Tesla made it barely through the last recession. There’s a good chance Ford doesn’t make it in the next recession. So, as a startup, a car company, it is far more difficult to be successful than if you’re an established, entrenched brand. It is absurd that Tesla is alive. Absurd! Absurd.”

Later in the podcast, he described 2018 by saying: “This year felt like five years of aging, frankly. The worst year of my entire career. Insanely painful.”

Then, hilariously when asked about Tesla’s fundamental mission, Musk – who has been known to fly around in his Gulfstream G650 private jet – said he found it “outrageous” when social justice warriors drive around in diesel cars.

“It’s very important for the future of the world. It’s very important for all life on Earth. This supersedes political parties, race, creed, religion, it doesn’t matter. If we do not solve the environment, we’re all damned. Yes. It sort of blows my mind, all these social justice warriors driving around in diesel cars. It’s outrageous.”

He also spoke about self inflicted wounds and sleep deprivation, revealing to Swisher that his brother once said to him: ““Look, if you do a self-inflicted wound, can you at least not twist the knife afterwards?” You stabbed yourself in the leg. You don’t really need to twist it in your leg. Why do that?”

Acknowledging that he is under pressure, Musk admitted to simply “making mistakes”. “It’s not intentional. Sometimes you’re just under a lot of pressure, and you’re not getting much sleep, you’re under massive pressure, and you make mistakes,” he said. 

Swisher told Musk that he looked good and rested for the interview, and Musk noted he was down to 80 to 90 hour work weeks, versus the 120 he claimed he had been working prior. Swisher also asked about Musk’s Ambien usage, which Musk again acknowledged. He stated: “…if you’re super-stressed, you can’t go to sleep. You either have a choice of, like, okay, I’ll have zero sleep and then my brain won’t work tomorrow, or you’re gonna take some kind of sleep medication to fall asleep.”

With regard to Tesla’s position as a company, Musk stated he felt like the company was no longer “staring death in the face” like it was in Q3. He also said that he thought Tesla was “over the hump” in terms of Model 3 production. Whether or not this is commentary on how the Model 3’s backlog looks remains to be seen. 

Despite Musk’s earlier soliloquy regarding how hard it was to function as a car company, when he was later asked about competitors to Tesla, he responded by stating: “I don’t really think that much about competitors.” When pressed about self-driving, he conceded that he thought Google/Waymo was the closest to Tesla.

Musk also stated that he didn’t think Ford would make it through the next recession. “There’s a good chance that Ford doesn’t make it in the next recession,” Musk told Swisher. He didn’t mention anything about Tesla in the same type of recession scenario.

And those intimating that Tesla may have a cozy relationship with Apple also appear to be wrong, as Musk took a potshot at Apple’s innovation, as well. 

“Apple used to really bring out products that would blow people’s minds. They still make great products, but there’s less of that. Like, I don’t think people are necessarily running to the store for the iPhone 11.”

Finally, Musk was asked about the “funding secured” and going private debacles. When asked about the Saudi’s stock they reportedly bought, he told Swisher, “They might have sold it, I don’t know.” Musk also reiterated financial guidance when he stated: “I think we will be cash-flow positive for all quarters going forward.”

Then, Musk, who said he did not want to “harp on those short sellers” spent time harping on short sellers. He also apparently has changed his view on short sellers from just being “smartish” to being “quite smart”:

“Yeah, you know, not to harp on those short-sellers, because people think I have this obsession with them, but I spent like 1 percent [or] less of time thinking about them —

Less than 1 percent of my tweets have anything to do with short-sellers. But the issue is that there’s a group of people who are quite smart, very mean, and have a strong financial interest in Tesla’s downfall.

And what that results in is a constant attack on the Tesla brand, on me personally, on the executive team, on our cars. You know, every mistake we make is amplified.

Going private would definitely result in some short-term drama. Let’s say we’re private, and then we went public five years from now. Then the area under the curve of brand damage by short-sellers would be probably less than the short-term difficulty of going private in the first place. That was the approximate calculus.”

Musk spent the rest of the interview talking about voting, the political environment, the Tesla semi, pickup truck, hovercrafts, dying on Mars and other figments of his imagination. 

When asked whether he would take Saudi money in light of the Khashoggi murder (which Musk described as sounding “pretty bad”), Musk responded “I think we probably would not, yes.”

Then, about an hour after attacking the Wall Street Journal, Musk was asked what he would have done differently in 2018.

His response:

“It’s fair to say I would probably not have tweeted some of the things I tweeted, that was probably unwise. And probably not gotten into some of the online fights that I got into.”

He finished up: “I probably shouldn’t have attacked journalists, probably shouldn’t have done that.”

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Kim Strassel is at it again. In a Thursday Op-Ed, she describes how Democrats, over the course of six weeks, turned a “blue wave” of momentum into an absurd circus over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh – tainting all of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls except Joe Biden. 

“Democrats obliterated their own breaker in the space of two weeks with the ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh,” Strassel writes, displaying some of the “vilest political tactics ever seen in Washington, with no regard for who or what they damaged or destroyed along the way.” 

And despite support for insurgent Democratic candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum sweeping voters off their feet during primaries, Democrats have been running “candidates with conservative credentials,” or “candidates who can’t run fast enough from liberal positions.” 

And at the end of the day, no matter how midterms turn out – “save for Joe Biden, every current leading contender for the Democratic nomination either was a ringleader of the Kavanaugh spectacle (Sens. Cory “Spartacus” Booker and Kamala Harris) or is a progressive icon (Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand).”

Via the Wall Street Journal: 

In a few days the U.S. will have its midterm results, and the Beltway press corps will lecture us on the lessons. Don’t expect to hear much about the one takeaway that is already obvious: that today’s preferred progressive politics—of character assassination, mob rule, intimidation and wacky policies—is an electoral bust. It is not what is winning Democrats anything. It is what is losing the party the bigger prize.

Six weeks ago, Democrats were expecting a blue wave to rival the Republican victory of 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats. Everything was in their favor. History—the party in power almost always loses seats. Money—Democrats continue to outraise Republicans by staggering amounts. The opposition—some 41 GOP House members retired, most from vulnerable districts where Donald Trump’s favorability is low. Democrats were even positioned to take over the Senate, despite defending 10 Trump-state seats.

Democrats obliterated their own breaker in the space of two weeks with the ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The left, its protesters and its media allies demonstrated some of the vilest political tactics ever seen in Washington, with no regard for who or what they damaged or destroyed along the way—Christine Blasey Ford, committee rules, civility, Justice Kavanaugh himself, the Constitution. An uncharacteristically disgusted Sen. Lindsey Graham railed: “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it!”

A lot of voters suddenly agreed with that sentiment. The enormous enthusiasm gap closed almost overnight as conservative voters rallied to #JobsNotMobs. Even liberal prognosticators today forecast that Republicans will keep the Senate and Democrats will manage only a narrow majority in the House, if that. It’s always possible the polls are off, or that there is a last-minute bombshell. But it remains the case that the ascendant progressive movement blew an easy victory for Democrats.

Meanwhile, to the extent Democrats are winning, it has been in large part due to party leaders’ quiet but laborious efforts to sequester that movement. Yes, talk-show hosts have made a darling of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive activist who defeated incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a New York primary. And liberal pundits are already claiming a victory by left-wing Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in Florida’s gubernatorial race will prove America aches for Medicare for All.

But on the ground, Mr. Gillum and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are the anomalies of this cycle. The far bigger if less covered story is the extent to which Democrats have run candidates with conservative credentials, or candidates who can’t run fast enough from liberal positions.

For all the talk of the “year of the woman,” it is equally the year of the Democratic “veteran.” In battleground after battleground district, Democrats recruited former service members as their candidates: Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Richard Ojeda in West Virginia, Jason Crow in Colorado, Jared Golden in Maine, Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Max Rose in New York. By at least one count, more than half the veterans who’ve run in 2018 are Democrats—a huge shift, and a reason some traditionally GOP districts are competitive.

Senate races, meanwhile, have been entirely defined by the extent to which Democratic candidates have positioned themselves as “moderates.” Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, a self-described “Prada socialist” and onetime antiwar activist, now insists she would be an “independent” voice in favor of bipartisanship. Nevada’s Jacky Rosen was one of three House Democrats who voted in September to make the Trump individual tax cuts permanent. Missouri incumbent Claire McCaskill is running a radio ad boasting she “is not one of those crazy Democrats.” Asked on Fox News about her Senate colleagues, she took a swipe at Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

All of this is reminiscent of 2006 and 2008, when Democrats won Congress by running moderates and then the White House by nominating a candidate who promised to unite the nation. Only after the party jerked left did the GOP win its 2010 blowout.

Will it be different this time? The moment the polls close on Tuesday, it will be wheels up for the 2020 presidential campaign. And save for Joe Biden, every current leading contender for the Democratic nomination either was a ringleader of the Kavanaugh spectacle (Sens. Cory “Spartacus” Booker and Kamala Harris) or is a progressive icon (Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand).

If Democrats win Tuesday, it will be despite this crowd, not because of it. They’d be wise to remember that a vote to rebuke President Trump’s inflammatory politics isn’t the same as an embrace of a progressive agenda or its candidates. The Democrats’ own recent history and campaign strategy prove it.

Write to kim@wsj.com.

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It seems Bloomberg’s sources are ‘fake’ as Larry Kudlow confirms to CNBC that the President did not ask the cabinet to draw up any trade deal with China and that there has been no responses from China on trade.

“…there is no massive movement between US and China on trade…”

Additionally, Kudlow confirmed that more tariffs on China are possible and that he is “not as optimistic” on a deal as he once was.

Stocks extended losses on the news…

Erasing all of Bloomberg headlines gains…

And Yuan is dropping back further…

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2012 was a seminal year for Europe and the ECB: that was the year when tensions in Euro markets receded in the second half of 2012, following Mr. Draghi’s seminal “whatever it takes” intervention in July of that year. The resulting containment of re-denomination risk in the Euro area and the wider improvement in market sentiment that followed helped re-establish a basis for better functioning of private markets. As a result, the need for central bank intermediation of intra-Euro area cross-border financial flows diminished.

But just as importantly, that was also the year when the ECB’s balance sheet had peaked shortly after the first 3-year Longer-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) was conducted…

… and whose runoff resulted in a major shrinkage in the ECB’s balance sheet, ultimately forcing Mario Draghi to launch QE as yields blew out.

Fast forward to today, when it is “deja vu” all over again for the ECB’s T(argeted)-LTRO.

But first, some background: At his press conference following the October 25 Governing Council meeting, ECB President Mario Draghi mentioned that “the TLTRO was raised by two speakers … but not in any detail”. And subsequently in a speech given in Paris, Banque de France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau remarked that “the question of TLTROs will need to be considered”.

Apparently, the targeted long-term refinancing operations (T-LTROs) initiated by the ECB in mid-2014 are coming back into policymakers’ focus, as one of the range of policy instruments available to manage the evolution of Euro area monetary policy.

Part of this renewed focus results from the first wave of 4-year T-LTROs starting to run off the ECB’s balance sheet. The first such operation was conducted in June 2014. The second was announced in March 2016. And, as Goldman points out in a recent note, to the extent that these operations maturing is associated with better market access for banks that had funded through the T-LTROs, this is a healthy sign of the re-booting of the credit system following the travails of the crisis years.

However, policymakers revisiting T-LTROs may also be a symptom of less benign developments. In particular, it may be symptomatic of the funding situation of banks that remain reliant on ECB operations to finance their balance sheets.

And, with the Italian sovereign debt/bank crisis once again on the radar at a time when the central bank is about to end its QE, any suggestion that the ECB will soon experience a period of significant balance sheet shrinkage will likely be met with even more dread by the market.

Here is the problem in a nutshell: Euro-area lenders are facing a cliff edge for their funding, and, as Bloomberg notes, some are hoping the European Central Bank will help them out. Around €722 billion ($832 billion) of long-term loans granted to banks by the ECB will start maturing from 2020, and new regulatory standards mean replacement funds could be needed as soon as next year. Adding to the concerns of balance sheet reducation is that lenders could be forced to refinance just as market rates rise, spurred by tighter U.S. policy and tensions such as Brexit and Italian politics.

As a result, some banks have been in contact with the ECB to discuss the risk of letting those four-year loans expire without affordable alternatives being in place, Bloomberg sources report, with some discussions taking place on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meeting in Bali this month.

And now, according to MarketNews, the ECB has responded to these concerns and is indeed considering a fresh T-LTRO.

That the ECB is considering this, or merely “trial ballooning” the concept, suggests that the ECB is getting nervous about a confluence of events, one of which is the sharp slowdown in the Eurozone economy, which just printed the lowest GDP in 4 years…

…even as the standoff between Rome and Brussels over Italy’s deficit continues with zero progress, resulting in sporadic episodes of bond market turbulence and threatening not only Italian sovereign bonds, but also Italian banks (due to the doom loop), and by implication, contagion into the broader Eurozone.

According to MNI, a new T-LTRO could be discussed as soon as December, but notes that “only a serious economic shock could prompt the move.“

Of course, since nothing has been fixed in the Eurozone, the ECB will have no choice but launch a new T-LTRO, one which merely allows existing debt to be rolled over, however by doing so it would confirm that the Eurozone has, in fact, triggered an “economic shock.”

Which is why it is no surprise why the Euro tumbled to session lows on the news…

… sent the dollar to highs, and pushed yields higher now that the sequence of events at the ECB appears to be T-LTRO first, and only then more QE, confounding those analysts who expected Draghi to give up on his plan to end QE and continue monetizing Eurozone debt.

In any case, and as is customary for the ECB, watch for a round of denials in the near-term, followed by another trial balloon to gauge the market reaction, before Draghi ultimately commits to a new, and massive T-LTRO some time around the turn of the new year.

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Having reportedly ‘folded’ by agreeing to let eight countries – including Japan, India and South Korea – keep buying Iranian oil after it reimposes sanctions on the OPEC producer next week, it seems President Trump wanted to show how tough he is once again.

In what can only be described as a ‘Game Of Thrones’-style tweet, the president just tweeted an image of himself with the words “Sanctions Are Coming” (playing on the HBO show’s ‘Winter is Coming’ warning)…

pic.twitter.com/nk2vKvHuaL

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2018

The identity of the countries getting waivers is expected to be released officially on Monday, when U.S. restrictions against oil dealings with Iran go back into effect.

“We’re quite confident moving forward that the actions that are being taken are going to help us exert maximum pressure against the Iranian regime,” deputy State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said at a briefing on Thursday.

“This leading state sponsor of terrorism is going to see revenues cut off significantly that will deprive it of its ability to fund terrorism throughout the region.”

Still, reverting back to the Game of Thrones analogy, we hope Trump is not underestimating the ‘dragon’ that Iran has at its back.

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The first 100 active-duty US military servicemembers have arrived at the US-Mexico border as part of Operation Faithful Patriot, as a caravan of Central American migrants winds its way north through Mexico after having rejected Mexico’s offer of “shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs.” 

The US troops are doing initial assessments of the border crossing at McAllen, Texas according to Fox News, while a Defense Department official told the network that there are around 2,600 troops at staging bases “largely in Texas,” while several thousand more are anticipated to arrive this weekend to California and Arizona. 

The Pentagon has said that over 7,000 US troops are being sent to the border, while President Trump said on Wednesday that the number could reach as high as 15,000. 

Trump has drawn a hard line on immigration just ahead of the midterm elections.

Last week, officials indicated that 800 to 1,000 troops might be sent. On Monday, they announced that about 5,200 were being deployed. The next day, an Air Force general rejected a news report putting the figure at up to 14,000.

The troops going to the border areas of Texas, Arizona and California are a small fraction of the nation’s roughly 1.3 million active-duty service members, and the mission is set to last only 45 days. –Fox News

Troop movement has been documented over the last several days over social media:

There are already dozens of photos and videos on the US military’s media site showcasing deployments for “Operation Faithful Patriot” to the border. pic.twitter.com/V7IBe0ME94

— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) October 31, 2018

It’s already underway: DoD video shows a C-17 leaving Dover for Fort Knox on an alert call today as part of Operation Faithful Patriot, the new military mission to secure the southern border https://t.co/twIjdnfH69 pic.twitter.com/Il3jKeNlmv

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) October 29, 2018

PHOTOS: Soldiers from Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 89th Military Police Brigade, Task Force Griffin, load a generator and a light medium tactical vehicle onto a C-17 in support of Operation Faithful Patriot pic.twitter.com/Ix1TeJVooQ

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) October 29, 2018

The military operation is being headed up by Gen. Terrance O’Shaughnessy – head of the US Northern Command. He has argued that the caravan is a potential threat, though has not expanded on what he meant. 

“I think what we have seen is we’ve seen clearly an organization at a higher level than we’ve seen before,” O’Shaughnessy said. “We’ve seen violence coming out of the caravan and we’ve seen as they’ve passed other international borders, we’ve seen them behave in a nature that has not been what we’ve seen in the past.”

On Thursday following reports that members of the caravan were throwing rocks at Mexican forces, President Trump said that the US military would treat anyone throwing rocks as if they were “rifles,” implying that troops would fire on the caravan. 

On whether the military at southern border might fire on migrants, Pres Trump says “I hope not.”

“I hope there won’t be that, but I will tell you this – anybody throwing rocks… we will consider that a firearm, because there’s not much difference.” https://t.co/fyk1ncmiwj pic.twitter.com/OGbFHFhB3A

— ABC News (@ABC) November 1, 2018

Trump’s comments come on the heels of several clips featuring violent migrants, including this one of rocks being thrown at Mexican security forces on the Guatemalan border. 

Here is video of the migrant caravan throwing rocks & molotov cocktails at Mexican security forces on the Guatemalan border.

I reached out to the man who took this video.

He confirms it’s authenticity.

Watch it.

The caravan is violent. pic.twitter.com/WqnffoH6yH

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 1, 2018

Trump promised an executive order sometime next week which would ban migrants from being able to claim asylum if they cross the US border illegally. He has also promised to set up vast tent cities “all over the place” in order to house caravan members, as opposed to the longstanding policy of “catch and release” by which asylum seekers are given court dates before they are set free.

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Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Why aren’t more people talking about this? It’s a huge development and nary a peep anywhere. The mainstream media is filled with baited expectations for 3% wage growth on Payroll Friday. All eyes are on the labor market, which is a lagging indication, instead of on the oil market, which is forward looking.

As of this writing, the futures curve for WTI has expanded this current selloff. The level of alarming contango has continued to widen, in both amplitude as well as frequency, in just the past few days.

The question at the front was rhetorical. The reason everyone wishes to focus on the labor report is obvious. The wage data in particular outwardly though misleadingly conforms to the idea of an economic boom, at least in the US. The crude market isn’t just saying “wait a minute”, it completely refutes that very thing.

Furthermore, the oil curve had only been in backwardation less than a year. It flipped toward that positive economic signal, which was widely covered, exactly one year ago today.

We’ve seen this all before. The oil curve shifted to contango last on November 20, 2014. It was ignored then, too, and after catching some reluctant notice immediately dismissed as a supply glut in favor of data showing the “best jobs market in decades.” The payroll reports four years ago were just too lovely to set aside for this impossible, according to Economists, ugliness.

Guess which one proved more valuable in assessing the way the global economy was headed, US most definitely included:

Etc., etc.

That, too, was a rhetorical exercise. Expect to hear about another “supply glut”, OPEC and some such, when convention finally does address another futures curve leaning the wrong way. And then we will hear about how “unexpected” everything will be when the labor market data proves irrelevant (already being legitimately uninspiring) all over again.

Honest analysis would take the WTI futures curve, along with the yield curve and eurodollar futures curves, as the world economy and markets traversing deeper into the red (below). Here as well as overseas. 

The alarms grow louder and louder. 

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